Bombard the Bourgeois Headquarters

ONE year ago today, at the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party, our great leader Chairman Mao put up his big-character poster "Bombard the Headquarters," a poster of great historic significance. This makes that day an important date which will be recorded as a landmark in the history of China's great proletarian cultural revolution.

He wrote: "China's first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster and Commentator's article on it in Renmin Ribao (Peoples Daily) are indeed superbly written! Comrades, please read them again. But in the last fifty days or so some leading comrades from the central down to the local levels have acted in a diametrically opposite way. Adopting the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie, they have enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the great cultural revolution of the proletariat. They have stood facts on their head and juggled black and white, encircled and suppressed revolutionaries, stifled opinions differing from their own, imposed a white terror, and felt very pleased with themselves. They have puffed up (he arrogance of the bourgeoisie and deflated the morale of the proletariat. How poisonous! Viewed in connection with the Right deviation in 1962 and the wrong tendency of 1064 which was 'Left’ in form but Right in essence, shouldn't this make one wide awake?" This big-character poster concentrated its fire on bombarding China's top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road. It exposed the bourgeois headquarters hidden in the apparatus of the dictatorship of the proletariat and within the Party. It sounded a clarion call for a sweeping advance in the proletarian cultural revolution. When they read "Bombard the Headquarters," it suddenly dawned upon the proletarian revolutionaries that there were two radically antagonistic headquarters inside the apparatus of the dictatorship of the proletariat. One was the proletarian headquarters headed by Chairman Mao; the other was the bourgeois headquarters headed by China's Khrushchov. The antagonism and struggle between two headquarters were the concentrated expression of the extremely sharp, complicated and deep-going struggle between the two classes, the two roads and the two lines under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As soon as the great proletarian cultural revolution appeared on the horizon, the handful of top Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road, with their reactionary class instincts, sensed that this revolution sounded the death knell of the bourgeois headquarters. Therefore they put up a desperate struggle. The bourgeois headquarters headed by China's Khrushchov which worked under cover within the Party for a long lime is the most dangerous enemy of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. Flying red flags to hide their true colours, they lay in ambush by the side of Chairman Mao. The easiest way to take a stronghold is from within. Counter-revolutionary activities aimed at subverting the dictatorship of the proletariat in China were conducted at both the upper and lower levels, and mainly at the upper level. The greatest danger lay at the upper level. In the Soviet Union, the bourgeois headquarters took shape, headed by Khrushchov. It usurped the leadership of the Party and the State, and the whole country rapidly changed its colour. We have to take warning when the cart in front overturns. The bourgeois headquarters hidden in the Party was rigged up by a handful of people taking the capitalist road who had wormed their way into the leading bodies of the Party and who colluded with each other.

They are big careerists and conspirators who usurped real power. They got control of part of the state apparatus, held part of the power in the Party, the government and the army, and to a considerable extent controlled the positions in the ideological sphere in China. China's top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road was an important figure wielding great power and influence. The other counterrevolutionary revisionists including Peng Teh-huai, Peng Chen, Lo Jui-ching, Lu Ting-yi and Yang Shang-kun were either in civil or military positions, some grabbed Party power, others took control of the pen and still others of the gun. In short, they stretched their hands into all spheres, desperately seizing and holding fast to positions vital for staging a counterrevolutionary coup d'etat and for overthrowing the political power of the proletariat. If the proletariat were not vigilant against this bourgeois headquarters and if it remained apathetic and allowed that headquarters to exist and expand unchecked, then, as Chairman Mao sharply pointed out, "it would not take long, perhaps only several years or a decade, or several decades at most, before a counter-revolutionary restoration on a national scale inevitably occurred, the Marxist-Leninist Party would undoubtedly become a revisionist party or a fascist party, and the whole of China would change its colour." At the crucial moment of the struggle between the bourgeoisie attempting to stage a come-back and the proletariat fighting to frustrate this attempt, our greatest leader of genius Chairman Mao and his closest comrade-in-arms Comrade Lin Piao sharply and penetratingly saw through the entire subversive scheme of this bourgeois headquarters within the Party, and unerringly bore down upon its counter-revolutionary manoeuvre in good time. Chairman Mao has studied and summed up the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat both at home and abroad and, in particular, drawn a bitter historical lesson from the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union by the Khrushchov counter-revolutionary revisionist clique. He has personally launched and led the unprecedented, great proletarian cultural revolution in the course of which hundreds of millions of people have been mobilized from the bottom up to expose and overthrow the bourgeois headquarters within the Party headed by China's Khrushchov. The main task in the great proletarian cultural revolution and the fundamental measure for the prevention of the restoration of capitalism is completely to destroy the bourgeois headquarters within the Party. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the main target of the revolution is this bourgeois headquarters and its agents in various areas and departments, the handful of Party people in authority taking the capitalist road. This is Comrade Mao Tse-tung"s greatest creative contribution to and the latest development of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road has been unhorsed by the proletarian revolutionaries in the course of the earth-shaking great proletarian cultural revolution. The bourgeois headquarters within the Party has been badly battered. However, this bourgeois headquarters and its agents in various areas and departments are using what influence they still have to deceive a number of people and muster the conservative forces to launch a wild counterattack. The serious political incident that recently took place in Wuhan was indeed a very clear exposure of this. The Central Committee of the Party has called on the proletarian revolutionaries throughout the country to mobilize themselves, concentrate all forces and focus on the target so as to further deepen and extend the revolutionary mass campaign to criticize and repudiate the handful of top Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road, politically, ideologically and theoretically. We must be clear that though the bourgeois headquarters has been stripped of its organizational and administrative powers, the pernicious influence of the bourgeois reactionary line pushed by them over a long period is very deep and far-reaching. If the revolutionary mass criticism and repudiation is not carried through to the end, the handful of Party people in authority taking the capitalist road with China's Khrushchov as their chief representative might come to life again and make use of their political and ideological influence to continue to poison the masses and oppose the proletarian headquarters. Are not these stubborn class enemies still putting up a desperate resistance and frenzied counter-attack? Refuting them politically, ideologically and theoretically and discrediting them completely, therefore, amounts to smashing the bourgeois headquarters beyond repair. We must understand that the great battle to smash the bourgeois headquarters has been waged under the absolute leadership of the proletarian headquarters headed by Chairman Mao. It is imperative that under all circumstances we follow unswervingly and closely our great leader Chairman Mao, the invincible thought of Mao Tse-tung, the proletarian revolutionary line represented by Chairman Mao, and the proletarian headquarters headed by him. Every proletarian revolutionary fighter must creatively study and apply Chairman Mao's works in the revolutionary mass criticism and repudiation and correctly bring his own thinking and action into line with Mao Tse-tung's thought so as to be truly able to fight wherever Chairman Mao directs. The proletarian revolutionaries must form an alliance, stand firmly on the side of Chairman Mao's proletarian headquarters and unite with the revolutionary masses, so as to perform great new exploits in destroying the bourgeois headquarters and to carry China's great proletarian cultural revolution through to the end.